[Theme] Art Book

alphatoanant

Updates 8/4/17

Added new custom systems: batman, castlevania, disney, frogger, wonderboy
refactored all system logos (reduced filesize on a few)

Thank you for your feedback and ideas @EvilDindon!

I love the cleanness of your mockup and it gave me ideas about how to handle marquees on video views. My going in approach for the design was to showcase the art of each game's box or flyer and I am working out how to bring marquee's into that look while keeping the visual focused. And your point about the marquee maybe being redundant was one of the reasons I hadn't started on it yet =). I am not totally sure I will add marquee support but definitely looking at it.

For system view I love your controller idea. I am also playing with the concept of adding a screenshot of a popular game for each system to (as you pointed out) bring in color. So I am going to play with both now =) I don't have a timeline yet but its next on my list after finishing up a set of custom system logos being discussed in this thread (https://retropie.org.uk/forum/topic/12024/themes-custom-collection-standardized-naming)

Thank you again and looking forward to more of your feedback. I'll keep you up to date.

pjft

If I may, what I really like about this theme is the simplicity and elegance of the design. The system view is, for lack of a better word, classy. It can stay on in any place and is discreet yet memorable, elegant yet it has all it needs.

While I wouldn't object to adding color or a screenshot, as it's your theme, I feel its strength lies in what it doesn't have.

I will likely stay with the plain black and grey version of the theme for the foreseeable future, alternating with other themes depending on the occasion. :)

alphatoanant

@pjft yes this is my back and forth on it and why I am focussing on logos first =)

The initial intent for system view was for it to be like what you see as a first page in a simple stark coffee table book (the basic view approach as an extension that design as well).

So as I play with designs one of my main checks continues to be... can I leave this on a tv in a room and not have it feel out of place, does it feel subtle, not overwhelming.

Thank you for saying this "I feel its strength lies in what it doesn't have." - its exactly what I am aiming for.

pjft

@alphatoanant By all means.

If it's worth anything, my wife prefers your theme to any of the others I have on by default. She feels all the others are too flashy, so I imagine that if I'm to have this set up always on, this will be the only approved theme :)

barrymossel

@alphatoanant Nice theme. Are you planning to do a 4:3 version as well? :)

EvilDindon

@alphatoanant said in [New Theme] Art Book:

Updates 8/4/17

Added new custom systems: batman, castlevania, disney, frogger, wonderboy

refactored all system logos (reduced filesize on a few)

--- Are these custom systems or custom collections ?

Thank you for your feedback and ideas @EvilDindon!

I love the cleanness of your mockup and it gave me ideas about how to handle marquees on video views. My going in approach for the design was to showcase the art of each game's box or flyer and I am working out how to bring marquee's into that look while keeping the visual focused. And your point about the marquee maybe being redundant was one of the reasons I hadn't started on it yet =). I am not totally sure I will add marquee support but definitely looking at it. Yep you're maybe right, marquee is redundant in most cases (when the boxart or flyer has a clear logo in it)

For system view I love your controller idea. I am also playing with the concept of adding a screenshot of a popular game for each system to (as you pointed out) bring in color. So I am going to play with both now =) I don't have a timeline yet but its next on my list after finishing up a set of custom system logos being discussed in this thread (https://retropie.org.uk/forum/topic/12024/themes-custom-collection-standardized-naming)
Not sure about screenshots, I think the system selection carousel must stay very "abstract" ; screenshots are meant to be in the gamelist views, imo. A graphic reprsentation of the console or the controller, just like in carbon theme, is the cleanest and classiest to me
Thank you again and looking forward to more of your feedback. I'll keep you up to date.Thanks for your theme !

HurricaneFan

@alphatoanant I like the colored controller images idea on the system view. I feel like the system view almost seems too muted in lack of color.

While I do have marquee images in my setup, I'm on the fence on if this theme needs to use them. I really like how the box art and video are the main focus. The marquee image would start to clutter the look of this theme.

gaavoid

This is a real sleek theme. I'd consider this to be in the top few.
Any plans on adding Famicom and Supergrafx?

EvilDindon

@hurricanefan said in [New Theme] Art Book:

@alphatoanant I like the colored controller images idea on the system view. I feel like the system view almost seems too muted in lack of color.

While I do have marquee images in my setup, I'm on the fence on if this theme needs to use them. I really like how the box art and video are the main focus. The marquee image would start to clutter the look of this theme.

Yeah you're right. Boxart or flyer is enough. Let's keep it simple

EvilDindon

@hurricanefan said in [New Theme] Art Book:

@alphatoanant I like the colored controller images idea on the system view. I feel like the system view almost seems too muted in lack of color.

Yeah this would really spice up a bit the theme, while staying still simple and clean

alphatoanant

More updates

I am working on logos for the genre folders being discussed in https://retropie.org.uk/forum/topic/12024/themes-custom-collection-standardized-naming

Here is what I have so far:
alt text

I am thinking through a different icon for fighting but wanted to see what you thought so far.

All are up on github now with a few other custom systems so you can test them in real time if you like.

@barrymossel, I am not currently planning a 4:3 version. Once I finish more logos I am going to take a step away to refocus and come back fresh. I will add it to my backlog to see if there is a way to make it work and let you know.

@gaavoid, I will add Famicom and Supergrafx to my list to complete.

@EvilDindon re: "Are these custom systems or custom collections ?":

I have kind of been using those interchangeably (which may be wrong) =)

Essentially I am creating folders that can be used by the "Create New Custom Collection From Theme" function in the new Game Collections feature. This is done so that you would get a nice logo/art for say a collection of "zelda" games.

That said the theme also supports creating collections without referencing an existing folder and they will still look good - they just won't have a custom logo. Does that make sense?

HurricaneFan

@alphatoanant I like this idea.

For the fighting one, you could do tiny stick fighters like this, of course much smaller:
alt text

alphatoanant

Updates 8/5/17:

updated fighting theme
added themes for: metalslug, metroid, mortalkombat, pacman, streetfighter, lightgun, supergrafx, famicom

Updated Genre Theme Logo Set
alt text
@HurricaneFan for the fighting genre I tried a pair of boxing gloves. It feels like it fits well with the other icons - what do you think?

@gaavoid supergrafx and famicom are available now

pjft

@alphatoanant these look great to me!

gaavoid

@alphatoanant Nice. Will give it a try later on. I feel this could be my new main theme.
It's a battle between this, retrorama and comicbook.

HurricaneFan

@alphatoanant I like it!

DeadlyEdna

Hi,

I've signed up purely to say how much I love this theme. Please don't add colour or controllers or screenshots or any of that to the system menu; there are plenty of other themes that have that all over them, and I cannot stand most of them. What you have created here is something beautiful in it's elegance. It makes me actually WANT to use emulationstation. That's a genuine statement.

Everything about it - the clean logos, the box art/video slight overlap, the font choice, the button help... I adore it.

If you do go down the road of adding colours and filler to the system menu, would you consider keeping this one as clean as it is now? I would be gutted if you followed half of the suggestions here (no offence meant to those suggesting, we've all got our own likes and dislikes).

JuL1Xxx

How to Scrape HD images? in my TV the images screaped are in low graphics.

Another question: Square videos like GBC, is there a solution for black bars in the sides?

Thanks for this amazing work!! :)

TMNTturtlguy

@jul1xxx depending on how many games you have scraped higher resolution images and video are hard for the pi to handle and you may have performance issues when in the gamelist. Most users actually reduce video sizes due to this.

You can reformat video sizes in a program like handbrake. That program allows you to resize and format.

alphatoanant

I had a chance to set up Game & Watch today and am really enjoying it. The implementation of lr-gw is awesome and very easy to get running.

It also gave me a chance to check out how it would look in the theme and work out the command for selph's scraper to get things looking clean.

Here is what it ends up looking like:
alt text

alt text

To get this look:

make sure you have selph's scraper installed (see: https://retropie.org.uk/docs/Scraper/)
from the command line navigate to the gameandwatch roms folder

cd RetroPie/roms/gameandwatch

and run this command

/opt/retropie/supplementary/scraper/scraper -console_src=ss -console_img=clabel,b,s -img_format=png -max_height=540 -max_width=505 -image_dir=media -image_path=media

These settings make sure the scraper uses Screenscraper as a metadata source and prioritizes downloading Label images (clabel) which is how the system images are catalogued there

I added these details to my github readme (in addition to scraping options for other systems). Hope you find them helpful!

Thank you all for your feedback on genre icons. Are there any others that you would find useful (like "platformer", "puzzle")?

@DeadlyEdna thank you. The system view design as it looks now is what I was originally shooting for and I am very happy with it as well (and amped to know you and others are digging its simplicity).

I noted a few posts back that one of the principles I am following for this theme is "can I leave this on a tv in a room and not have it feel out of place, does it feel subtle, not overwhelming".

So if I do work on a variant design I will be checking it against that principle at each step - I have left a few ideas on the floor so far because of it =)

All that said I am focusing on custom system logos now so its not likely I am going to get to trying out other ideas for system view for a while

If I come up with something interesting my plans are:

This theme and its design would remain as is
and I would release the new design xml here for users to manually change by hand or release a variant (new name/github repo)

I hope that helps and I again I very much appreciate your thoughts on this. Thank you for joining the forums and helping out.